`NEWS` THAT`S NONE OF OUR BUSINESS

Pat Robertson and I are from the same generation, are close in age and have some things in common.

Both of us served in the Korean War. Neither of us did anything particularly heroic or dangerous to the enemy.

Robertson has admitted that before he experienced a religious conversion, his two main interests in life were poker and women.

Looking back about 35 years, I`d have to admit that poker, women and beer were high on my priority list.

Both of us married the same year, 1954. I was 22. Robertson was 24.

We both had kids. My first son was born in 1959. My wife and I waited because it was almost five years before my paycheck could support a small family.

Robertson had his first child earlier-only 10 weeks after he was married. I`m aware of this highly personal detail of Robertson`s life because I happened to read it in the Wall Street Journal a few days ago. It then became a big network story.

It`s not something I wanted to know about because I agree with Robertson- it`s none of my business. Or yours, or the Wall Street Journal`s.

I know that we`ve somehow reached the point where a presidential candidate`s life is supposed to be an open book, but I think that there are some limits.

And in this case, I think we`ve barged across that limit.

What is it, exactly, that this revelation by the newspaper has told us about Pat Robertson?

It`s told us that while a young man, and before he became a clergyman, he and his future wife had premarital sex.

I`m not interested in knowing whether Robertson and his future wife engaged in premarital sex 33 years ago. I`m not interested in knowing whether Ron and Nancy did, or Jimmy and Rosalynn, Jerry and Betty, Dick and Pat, Lyndon and Lady Bird, Jack and Jackie, Ike and Mamie or any of them going back to George and Martha.

Nor am I interested in whether any of the presidential candidates, from both parties, had premarital sex with their wives. It`s none of my business.

Obviously, the people who run the Wall Street Journal think otherwise. They think it is their business since they went to the bother of digging up the evidence. I assume that reporters looked up old public records that show when Robertson married and when the child was born.

And the Journal thinks it is our business, because they told us about what they found.

But what the Journal hasn`t yet told us is why it is my business or yours.

Does it tell us something about Pat Robertson`s character, that overworked political word?

Well, I suppose it tells us that when he was a very young man, like most young men, he wanted to do it. Big deal. I`d be concerned if he didn`t.

Does it tell us he was a rogue? Not at all. He didn`t wrong and abandon a woman. They married, have been together ever since and appear to be happy, and their son seems like a fine young man.

Does it tell us that he`s a hypocrite, because he now preaches against premarital sex? No, it doesn`t. As he freely admits, he was a bit of a hell-raiser as a young man. But when he became deeply religious, his views and personal conduct changed. There`s nothing unusual about believing one thing when you`re young, and the opposite when you get older.

As far as I can see, this doesn`t tell me one thing that I really needed to know about Robertson.

This isn`t in any way comparable to the Gary Hart case, in which a married candidate seemed to go out of his way to let the press corps know what a Romeo he was, then publicly challenged them to catch him.

If anything, there`s something almost quaint about the Robertson disclosure.

Here we are, in an era when hundreds of thousands of unmarried couples openly live together-including stars of stage, screen and the tube. Some have kids. Some marry; others don`t. Society barely shrugs.

But here`s Pat Robertson, having to go through the embarrassment of explaining something very personal that occurred between him and his wife back in the 1950s, a far more restrained and repressed decade.

Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe the Wall Street Journal was right in making this matter public.

If so, I wish it would run an editorial explaining just why it was important for you and me to know about the premarital relationship of the Robertsons.

And while they`re at it, the editors of the Journal might also answer another question: Hey, guys, did you and your sweeties ever get it on?